31 Mar 2010 | Index Index, minipost
On 25 March, journalist Gustavo Azocar, host of “Café con Azócar,” a news and political commentary of Televisora del Táchira, was sentenced to two years and six months imprisonment for illegal profiting in acts of public administration. Judge José Hernán Oliveros found the journalist guilty of fraud in the signing of a 2000 advertising contract between the state lottery and Radio Noticias 106, where he was working at the time. Azocar, an outspoken critic of Chavez’s government, was released from prison, where he had been held since July 2009, and he will be able to serve his sentence on probation.
31 Mar 2010 | Index Index, minipost
On 28 March, unknown persons attacked and burned the car of journalist Adela Gómez, from Radio 21, in Santa Cruz province (southern part of Argentina). The attack took place while her car was parked outside Gómez’s house. The journalist is well know in the area for her investigations on local polical power. “I don’t know if I’m going to keep practicing the profession because I fear for my life, and I have a family,” she said.
31 Mar 2010 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
The Maltese Front Against Censorship has asked the country’s MEPs to raise the country’s case in the European Parliament. The Front is concerned with recent infringements on freedom of expression, which include punishment of carnival revellers for dressing up as Christ, the ban of the play Stitching, the threat of a prison sentence to a newspaper editor for publishing an erotic story, and the suspended prison sentence to an artist for offending against the Catholic religion. In February, protesters gathered in the capital Valetta, against escalating censorship by government agencies.
31 Mar 2010 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
Yesterday Chinese users of the Google.cn search engine faced problems accessing results for normal terms such as “dog” or “home”. Although Google has redirected traffic to its uncensored servers in Hong Kong, internet users in mainland China still face the Great Firewall, which bans access to sites containing sensitive information. The glitch was caused by Google’s new coding which incorporated “gs_rfai” into certain search terms. The letters “RFA” was mistaken to be an acronym for Radio Free Asia, a site banned by the Great Firewall.
